The governor of Florida has declared a state of emergency after a significant leak at a large storage dam of wastewater threatens to flood roads and a system that stores polluted water bursts.
MIAMI – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency on Saturday after a significant leak at a large pond with wastewater threatened to flood roads and could burst a system that stores polluted water.
Florida officials have ordered the evacuation of more than 300 homes and closed a highway near the large reservoir in the Tampa Bay area north of Bradenton.
Residents living in the Piney Point Reservoir have received a text message warning them to leave the area immediately because the collapse is a looming issue. Authorities expanded the evacuation area later Saturday to include more homes, but said they have no plans to open shelters.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection says a breach was detected Friday in one of the walls of a 33-acre dam that is 8 feet deep and contains millions of gallons of water containing phosphorus and nitrogen. of an old phosphate plant.
Officials brought in rocks and materials late Friday through Saturday to fill the hole in the dam, but the attempt was unsuccessful.
Manatee County Manager Scott Hopes told a news conference on Saturday that the biggest concern was that the water could flood the area, which he said had agriculture and a low population density.
“We’re talking about the potential of about 600 million gallons (2.3 billion gallons) within seconds and minutes to leave the pool and go into the area,” Hopes said.
Workers pumped thousands of gallons per minute on the premises to reduce the volume should the dam burst. The pumping of the entire dam would take 10 to 12 days. Others worked to determine how the water flows from the dam to Tampa Bay.
DeSantis’ declaration of a state of emergency allocates more pumps and cranes in the area. The owner, HRK Holdings, did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
The dam where the leak was discovered is at the old Piney Point phosphate mine, in a stack of phosphogypsum, a waste product from the production of fertilizer that is radioactive. It contains small amounts of naturally occurring radium and uranium, and the stacks can also release large concentrations of radon gas.
Hopes says that if the dam collapses, there is a risk that it could destabilize the walls of other areas in the plant.
‘The dam is basically salt water. We saw ducks yesterday, there were pike swimming in them. It sustains nature. This is not the case for the other two pools, ‘he said, and the wastewater in the other dams must be treated to reduce ammonium content and other materials.
The executive order declaring the state of emergency states that the broken structure contains 1.8 billion liters of seawater mixed with 480 million liters of seawater mixed with process water and the embankment material of the old fertilizer manufacturing plant.
Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried asked the governor in a letter to convene an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss a plan, adding that the property had seen similar leaks in the past.
“The immediate evacuation of residents, disruption of families during Easter weekend and possible environmental disasters require the attention and action of Florida’s government-elected leadership,” Fried said.
In 2016, more than 200 million gallons of contaminated wastewater from another fertilizer plant in central Florida leaked into one of the state’s most important aquifers after a massive sinkhole opened in a pond of a phosphogypsum pile.
There are at least 70 drywall stacks in the United States and about 27 in Florida, mostly in West Central Florida. The wastewater stored in the gypsum stacks cannot be seen from the ground as the piles around the structure can rise to 150 meters.